I'm getting ready to move at the end of the month, and I am considering, instead of getting DSL trying out Clearwire Wireless. I'm wondering if anyone has used this service or something similar, and if so what was your experience like? Did you have good connectivity? How about speed?

It could be worth a try.. I've never used a Wireless ISP (I just have cable, yay me) and I'm a novice at wireless, so I'm always wary of it, but it will probably be a bit slower than an average user's DSL, I think. Faster than dialup, like they claim, of course. How out in the country/in the city are you or how far away from the tower? It probably gets worse the farther out you are.

Still, security would be my biggest concern.. after reading up on their site and seeing that one graphical depiction it seems fine, they run on a licensed frequency range and all.. that's good, but if you can configure those modems too much, or if they don't do a good job of it, then you might well be able to turn one into a listener device to capture others' signals if they haven't secured theirs properly? Anyone know better? Mind you, that entirely depends on what the modems do besides capture signals from the Clearwire tower.. what kind of encryption protocol they use to communicate between modem and tower, which they don't say what it does or doesn't support on the website, I think.

And prepare to lose connection when there's a solar eclipse!

Maybe I'm wrong on it all though, but I'll be watching here closely to find out the answer too :)

Well I've used Wireless with our DSL actually because it's a wireless modem, so I usually connect that way with my laptop, and we have it set up to be a secure network that requires a key to get on. So I am not worried so much about the security end of it, because really, wired or wireless, what connection is completely secure?

As far as the towers, I live right near downtown in a city of about 200,000 and supposedly the signals are pretty good. I just read up on their website though that you can try it for 10 days and then if you don't like it you can get out of the contract (that was my main concern--a year long contract).

They have two connection plans, one is supposed to be 768 Kb/second and the other (about 8 bucks more a month) is 1.5, so if those are accurate, it should be as fast as DSL or cable....

I'm just wondering if anyone has actually used it and if it lives up to what they claim.

Aha. Well your wireless and their wireless is different, though.. yours is on the unlicensed band and so everyone and their pet dog has an wireless adapter that they can use to go wardriving around with. I don't think you could go around wardriving (for very long) with those modems that need power sockets though. :) But the security might not even be on your end, it would depend on what they set up in the tower or HQ to identify your modem out of the several thousand in your area, since every internet packet you receive will be propagated (after hopefully encryption!) over their entire area of coverage.

But if they're any shade of reliable at all then they probably should be relatively safe in those aspects, though.. did you try a google search on them and add keywords identifying your city or region? Look for blogs and what people say about it. :) Speed would be something you'd have to test.

Well I think we're going to give it a try with the 10 day trial period and see how it works. A big incentive is that they have a special deal going on right now where it's only 20 bucks a month for the first 6 months, and then 40 a month after that which is about 5 less than what we're paying for DSL. Cable is right out here--I had it before and had lots of problems. One day I saw the repair truck and went up and actually talked to the technician--he told me the truth that none of the tech support people would, that their infrastructure in the area is crap and that this was a continual problem. So we'll see how it goes with the wireless.

Forget that people Basic Dial-Up is the way to go its only $8.95 a month for me and I don't need speed for basic site access like here and if its a downlad be a little patiant people are always in a rush nowdays.

Dial-up really isn't an option for most people now-a-days either. I watch most of my news and movie trailers online, for example, and the massive advertising push on the internet now makes dial-up far less attractive every day.

In Miami, Bellsouth offers 256kbps DSL for $19.99 a month. It's what I use, and I have absolutely no problems with it (once I bought a new wireless router, that is, but that's another story), and I also play plenty of online games...actually, just about all of the big ones...WoW, Guild Wars, EVE...

Well, here's an update from experience. We decided to try out the wireless, since we could try it for 10 days and return it if we didn't like it. We are returning it.

Reasons:1. Craptacular signal. They said we'd be able to get good service in the new place we just moved to. I was a bit skeptical since we are smack up against the foothills now, but they said it wouldn't be a problem. Wrong. We usually have 1 bar out of 5, and usually can't stay connected for very long. Email and internet surfing work OK, but forget playing World of Warcraft.

2. Craptacular customer service. Long hold times, getting the runaround when we talk about returning the modem.

3. There is no 3. The first two reasons are reason enough.

DSL is a bit more expensive here, and they require you to have a land line, so we are getting cable hooked up next week.

Well, here's an update from experience. We decided to try out the wireless, since we could try it for 10 days and return it if we didn't like it. We are returning it.

Reasons:1. Craptacular signal. They said we'd be able to get good service in the new place we just moved to. I was a bit skeptical since we are smack up against the foothills now, but they said it wouldn't be a problem. Wrong. We usually have 1 bar out of 5, and usually can't stay connected for very long. Email and internet surfing work OK, but forget playing World of Warcraft.

2. Craptacular customer service. Long hold times, getting the runaround when we talk about returning the modem.

3. There is no 3. The first two reasons are reason enough.

DSL is a bit more expensive here, and they require you to have a land line, so we are getting cable hooked up next week.

I forgot--there is a 3. False advertising. When they were talking us into it, they made it sound like it was really easy to set up, and you could just jump on with your computer if it had a wireless card. Well, it is really easy to connect your ethernet card to the wireless modem and then get on with *that* computer. If you have other computers, you need a router. If you want to get on with other computers that have wireless, you need a wireless router. Feh!

Well, I understand that now...but they basically told us we wouldn't need a router. Maybe if I knew more about networking I'd have questioned it, but I'm not that knowledgable. I am more knowledgable now though...*sigh*